Ace McFadden

Ace McFadden here, lawyer extraordinaire and of course, your favorite bartender. You’d like my downtown, DC joint. I’ve got a wall-high choice of anesthesia, a dozen beers on tap including the latest from the microbrewery craze, and even PBR-Pabst Blue Ribbon for the vets that love to remember. Everything’s paneled in walnut. Heck, we even have a dance floor in the back, but the music is turned low until eight when it gets crazy. How else could I have heard two youngsters trading philosophy?

Gold power tie and hundred-dollar dress shirt. “The Electoral College is an archaic throwback from the colonies and needs to be tossed out. Fast.”

I knew this young guy even if I’d never met him before. Rich family called in a favor of their local congressman. His soubrette, a lovely, dark hair lass with Hispanic somewhere in her near past smiled. She had the large eyes and beguiling features of a dozen Hollywood actress, but it was her mind that floored me.

She sipped a dirty martini. “This dustup happens when someone doesn’t like the election results. I’d have to admit though, even history hasn’t seen so much hate of a sitting president.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, he might’ve won, but he’s not my president.”

She flashed a smile. Dazzling. “Who is your president, then?”

I washed and stacked the glasses splitting my mirror exam between the pretty lady and her dismal guy.

“Anyone but that jerk.”

“Mio. This isn’t the first time someone’s lost the Electoral College and won the popular vote. Come on.”

“We need the National Popular Vote.”

Ah Gawd, I moaned to myself. Not another educated idiot.

He was quick to follow up. “We elect everyone else by popular vote. Why not our president? Tell me in what country that makes sense.”

She batted big dark bedroom eyes. “Oh, let’s see. How about Canada, Israel, the UK, Germany, India...is that enough or do you want more?”

I watched the big kid scrunched up his eyebrows. She was handing him his ass. He’d better quit now or head back to civics class.

She gently stroked his hand with long slender fingers. “Consider this factoid. Only the biggest cities and counties will elect the president if the NPV is passed. LA, New York, San Fran, Dallas, Chicago. Aren’t you from a little town in Ohio? What about the other ninety percent of America? Do we all play good sheep? You think all the rest of the country won’t raise a ruckus if this gets shoved down their throats?”

“They’re all yahoos.”

She sighed and sipped. “Let’s talk about the founding father yahoos like George Mason and James Madison. They put this neat little deal together. Not even thirty years old and they could already see the problem. You know, you sort of remind me of a James Madison.”

I watched as the gloomy kid looked up, surprised and pleased. “Really?”

“Sure. They were inclusionists…like you. Plantations of the south, Puritans of the north. Towns, farms, and cities. In eighteenth century, the so call United part of the United States hung in the balance. The Electoral College is like a good Arroz Con Gandules. A little bit of this, a little of that. Your ancestors probably had a part in fixing this.”

She gestured lovely shoulders that nearly brought me to my knees.

She sipped slowly and continued. “My ancestors not so much. But we did learn to appreciate a good thing. The states decide how to choose their electors that choose the president. The states count the county or district votes. Everyone in the state watches everyone else. Everything is local, see? And, guess what?”

The young man watched her intently wanting to know what came next.

“It’s very hard to cheat a national election, Mio. Very hard indeed. Even the Russians and Ukrainians couldn’t figure it out and they tried.” A pink tongue touched red lips. “Some say it’s so hard to cheat, they want us to change the rules instead.”

I was thinking about taking this guy’s car keys away. As if she knew what I was thinking, her gaze fell to me and I got a secret smile.

She lowered her voice. “Centralizing the vote is a really bad idea. Keeping the Electoral College local means the occasional mistake won’t be a total disaster. Can you imagine if we’d had to trust all the politicians in this town to do the right thing? No. Trust Mr. and Mrs. America to do the right thing. We can, because like Tip O’Neil said, ‘All politics are local.’ And that’s the beauty of the Electoral College.”

He said, “I can recognize beauty.”

I almost whooped a hurrah. The idiot finally said something smart.

She smiled and found a twenty to push across the bar. “Keep the change, Ace. We’re going to take this history lesson home.”

Oh, boy. I hope she runs for President before I die.